Criminal Justice Reform

While the modern legal system has prisons at the core of its establishment, the Torah never features prison as a form of punishment, even as a deterrent. This, because the idea of locking someone up is antithetical to the nature of humanity. According to the Torah, a person was put on this earth for a purpose. Withholding one’s ability to achieve that purpose is the most inhumane treatment he can possibly suffer.

Under America’s criminal justice system, we have incarcerated more than two million of our fellow citizens in federal, state and county facilities. In contrast, the concept of prison does not appear anywhere in Judaism...

Rabbi Sholom Ber Lipskar is executive director of the Aleph Institute, which services the
religious needs of Jewish men and women in prison. In 1985, they brought a group of prisoners
to spend a weekend in Crown Heights, where they attended the Rebbe’s Shabbos Farbrengen.

Jacob Worenklein, who was an intern at the office of the president of the New York City Council, recalls arranging a meeting between City Council President Francis X. Smith and the Rebbe at a time when New York City was facing a surge in crime. (1969)